


Present Tense

by proser132



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, slashy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proser132/pseuds/proser132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...Can change to past tense in the blink of an eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present Tense

* * *

**Present Tense**

* * *

'What if I said I loved you?'

Ed froze, his fingers hovering bare millimetres above the oily film that marked the surface of the Gate back to Earth.

He turned very slowly to face the speaker, not entirely certain that he had heard correctly. There was no way. It wasn't possible within the parameters of his universe. It wasn't possible _outside_ the parameters of his universe, carefully ordered by the laws of alchemy and common sense. Not that he had much of _that_ particular quality, but still – this was...

'What?' He managed to stutter out.

'Would it stop you from leaving again? Or would you reject me and turn around, running back to another world to fix a problem that was never yours?'

Dammit, even when shaking the world off its long-steady foundation the bastard was still eloquent to a fault. He could afford to look a little more worried, couldn't he? – instead of standing there with a sad, small smile and an eyebrow arched over the black patch that covered much of his face, like he already knew Ed's answer to his earth-shattering question. Bastard, thinking he could outsmart Ed by guilt-tripping him into staying – well, no more. Ed wouldn't be driven by guilt any more.

'I'd still go,' Ed replied, certain. 'Ploys like this won't work on me.' There was a sharp intake of breath from Al, who stood with them on the plane as it soared erratically above the city of Central. Ed shoved aside the pain in his heart and focussed on the situation at hand – he didn't have much time, and he knew it.

'What if it wasn't a ploy?'

'Why is it still hypothetical?' Ed demanded, heart starting to trip in his chest. 'What the hell do want from me, Mustang?'

The other man held up a finger. 'Humour me, Fullmetal.' The sad smile was still there, but it had shrunk considerably. 'If I told you I loved you, would you run?'

...So he meant it? 'Are you serious?' Ed asked slowly, trying to speak around the heart that was (irrationally, in his opinion) bashing itself against his ribs.

'Would you run?'

Ed sighed at the repetition. '...Not my choice, bastard,' he answered truthfully. 'Someone has to go save those people from their government. Someone has to go stop that uranium bomb.' He scowled. 'I'm the only one.'

Al, who had remained silent and inconspicuous thus far, standing in the corner, finally spoke up. 'Brother, please... they would have discovered it in their own time.' His wide silver eyes, shot through bronze, were pleading. 'It's their problem now, Brother. You can't save more than one world.'

That remark stung, but he quashed it. 'I won't be guilted into staying,' he said, almost apologetically, to Al before turning back to Mustang. 'And I'm not sure I feel comfortable leaving Al in the hands of such a manipulative bastard,' he said darkly. A shudder went through the ship, but all three ignored it.

'I find it ironic,' Roy said quietly, so quietly Ed almost missed it, 'That the one time I'm not trying to manipulate you is the one time when you actually challenge me.'

'Stop it, Mustang!' Ed snapped, suddenly angered by the hopelessness in Roy's voice. 'Did you not hear me? I won't be guilted into staying!'

The other man frowned, each movement unconsciously artful in a way that made Ed's throat constrict around his firmly lodged heart. 'But you're being guilted into leaving,' he pointed out.

Ed found himself suddenly wordless.

'It's not your fault they took the bomb, Brother,' Al said in a small voice. 'Neither is it your fault we made it.'

Ed stared, but it was Mustang nodding along that set him off. 'People will die!' he protested.

'People die everyday, Ed,' Roy cut in, looking hard at the younger man as he jumped at the sound of his name. 'Why should you die when they'd only blow themselves up another way?'

Ed couldn't refute that, because he didn't know how. 'They – they need me!' he managed after a moment, looking from his brother to the man who was slowly taking away everything that was tying him to Earth.

'We need you, Ed.' Roy sounded very different from how Ed remembered him; less... cold, less like the logical and calm man who barked orders on the battlefield, less like the man who once smirked at Ed from behind the safety of a walnut desk. But above all else, what sounded most different was the 'we' – Ed wasn't sure if Roy meant everyone, both himself and Al, or himself alone.

'I –' Ed shook his head, as if trying to shake away his doubts and turn around, leave. 'I don't believe you.' He trusted Al to know that this wasn't directed at him. He would believe his brother in an instant, and normally that was enough – but now, for a reason he didn't understand, there was another variable in his equation. Roy Mustang.

'You don't believe me?' Roy repeated, looking taken aback.

'It's all hypothetical right now,' Ed glared. At this moment, everything rested on the tiniest fulcrum and was wavering one way, then the other. And it all rested on if Mustang was telling the truth, or just trying to get him to stay for his own ends. 'I need proof.'

'You need proof,' Roy dead-panned. A light Ed didn't recognise lit his eyes for second, then his face fell into the lines of stark determination. 'I can give you proof.'

He took a rapid step forward, and Ed backed away, surprised; the elbow of of his sleeve brushed against the Gate.

He felt it begin – the soft migration of atoms through the Gate – and thought with sudden terror that he was _leaving._ Gone, disappeared, chivvied away into nothingness and back again in a world not his own.

_Isn't that what you wanted_? His mind whispered as the first threads of his shirt began to disappear. _To leave?_

_No!_ he replied fiercely, sharp realisation and bitter-sweet loss welling up in his stomach. _No, I want to stay!_

'No, Ed!' A roar of dismay, and suddenly Ed was being pulled, tugged back toward a snarling Roy, who had a firm grip on his shoulders and was pulling with all his might.

There was a brief moment of the Gate warring with Roy's grip, clutching lovingly to the fibres of Ed's shirt, but then it reluctantly let go. Abruptly, the force that Roy was using to pull Ed away was too much, and they stumbled backward before Roy overbalanced and they fell.

Ed found himself sprawled out across Roy's chest, a draft stinging the circle of skin that had been eaten away by the Gate on his elbow, sucking in deep breaths of sweet Amestrian air (tainted as it was by the burning air-planes' smoke and the scent of gasoline – they should really consider getting off the aircraft).

Ed considered thanking Roy; after all, it was the polite thing to do, after someone saved your life before you almost made the mistake of your life. Ed realised it would have been a bigger mistake than the one he had made when he was twelve.

'Brother!' Al shouted in relief, but managed to stay in place as Ed sat back, bracing his hands on Roy's chest.

Ed settled on a semi-witty, mostly-shocked reply. 'Some proof,' he coughed, glaring slightly at Roy. 'Trying to kill me?'

'Be quiet,' Roy replied tersely, clutching the back of his head where he had cracked it against the hard metal floor.

Ed started, blinking down at Roy, then moved, gently cupping Roy's head in his hands. Roy opened his eye, staring up at Ed, and Ed let his mouth curve in a smile.

'Looks like I'm stuck here,' he sighed, probing the forming bump with light touches.

'But, Brother,' Al said, sounding thoroughly confused. 'The Gate is still open...' Ed heard his brother, but he was kind of focussed on Roy's eye, which shone with a curious mixture between understanding and fearful hope.

Ed kept his gaze on that eye as he set Roy's head gently back into Roy's hands and clapped his own, slamming them to the floor. The array was one he had never even considered before, but knew instinctively was the only one to end it. End everything that was hurting the people who mattered most to him.

A sharp gasp from Al at the _crack_ , when the Gate dissipated completely, and Roy sucked in a soft breath.

'Al?' Ed asked.

'I'll go try to figure out a way to transmute this to get back to the ground,' Al replied, once again showing that powerful ability to read his brother's mind.

'Thanks, Al,' Ed replied, and then there was the sound of his brother's feet slapping on the metal as he went out onto the wing.

Roy stared up at him, perfectly still. Then he sat up, and Ed's stomach burned as he realised Roy was taking care not to shift Ed from his perch above Roy's lap.

Roy licked his lips, as if his mouth was dry; Ed's eyes traced the movement before he knew what he was doing, and then blushed, to his own surprise. Then, even more shocking, Roy flushed lightly pink. 'You...' he said, and his voice was slightly shaky.

'Told you I'm stuck,' Ed shrugged, and then he felt the corners of his mouth twitch into a faint smile.

Roy finally began to look a tiny bit more relaxed – in fact, he looked more relaxed than Ed had ever seen him before.

''So, let me ask you a question,' Ed asked, his voice perfectly casual. 'If I didn't run, what would you do?' His smile grew. 'A purely hypothetical question, mind you.'

Roy placed his hands, very lightly, on Ed's hips, making Ed suck in a startled breath. The older man was mostly composed, now, but Ed could see the humanity now behind his eye, behind his masks. 'I suppose I'd kiss you,' he replied idly. 'Then demand your help in fixing the mess you, Al, and I have created by our stupid mistakes.' He was starting to smile, too, and the sight of it made Ed's embarrassed heart glow. 'And then, when that is all finished, I'd see about convincing you to come home with me.'

Ed's blush deepened, and Roy's smile took on a dark tinge. 'Hypothetically,' he continued, and his voice as it whispered past Ed's skin reminded Ed that they were much closer than they ever had been before, 'I would like that very much.'

Ed sucked in a deep breath, stomach almost fluttering (Gate, this was embarrassing, but he couldn't back down now). 'Do you love me?' he asked quickly, as if saying it faster would make any fall less painful.

'Yes,' Roy replied emphatically, and Ed's heart plunged into his stomach and bounced back up to its rightful place, where it proceeded to beat at twelve times the healthy speed.

Lifting his chin, he said, 'Well, I'm not running.'

'No, you're not,' Roy said, releasing a shuddering, near-happy sigh, and then kissed him.

A sharp heat darted across Ed's solar plexus at the wet heat of Roy's mouth, and that heat was _strange_ – it felt, in fact, the tiniest bit like he was redefining the parameters of his universe. But, hey – change wasn't all bad. Maybe he couldn't have imagined something like this as a child, but then again, as his tongue wrestled with Roy's in the single most enjoyable fight they'd ever had, he realised this wasn't exactly child's territory.

'And _now_ we go fix our mistakes,' Roy gasped as he broke away. The sound of his ragged breathing was perfect in Ed's ears, and he licked his lips, still tasting Roy on his mouth. Something in him noticed that was the first time he had ever thought anything about Roy was perfect, but he shoved that away; it didn't matter.

'Then home?' he asked, arching his eyebrow, and Roy gave him a grin, and it was that moment, when Roy smiled at him, so happy and brilliant, that Ed couldn't help it.

At that moment, Al was safe, he was home, and he fell in love with Roy Mustang.

'Yes, Ed,' Roy breathed, and his one black iris was soft in a reflection of Ed's own. 'Then home.'


End file.
